


Marking Time

by Elspethdixon



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M, post-CA#25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-26
Updated: 2007-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elspethdixon/pseuds/Elspethdixon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Barnes is wearing his big brother's clothes.  They don't fit right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marking Time

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work.
> 
> Notes: Inspired by Alex Ross's promo art, and my theory that it's Bucky in the costume, combined with a discussion with Seanchai over the fact that Bucky/Tony would be really, _really_ unfortunate, but (under those circumstances) scarily almost-plausible.

James Barnes is wearing his big brother's clothes. They don't fit right.

Steve's costume is too big, the blue leather loose across his shoulders. The mask feels stiff and suffocating, covering his entire head and half his face; the Winter Soldier's mask, like Bucky's mask, had only covered his eyes.

He'd given up entirely on the pants and boots; he was never going to fit into Steve's size 13 shoes, and there was no point in trying.

For decades, when he'd looked in the mirror, he had seen the Winter Soldier, the CCCP's assassin -- someone with no history of his own, a tool, a weapon. Then, when Steve had given him his memories back, he'd seen two people, maybe three: the Winter Soldier, Russia's assassin; Bucky Barnes, America's assassin; and the Bucky who'd been Cap's friend.

Now he saw a dead man, an ideal, someone who wasn't James Barnes at all. The American Soldier, rather than the Winter Soldier, but he still had no history of his own; he was carrying around someone else's.

Everyone else saw a dead man, too. Sharon, Sam, Stark... Especially Stark.

He had planned on killing Stark, initially, before Red Skull had derailed his plans. Seeing him on television, weeping like a war widow at Steve's funeral, Bucky had watched the anguish on Stark's face and been consumed with anger at the man's hypocrisy, and his sheer arrogance at daring to act like his whole world had been destroyed when it was Steve who had died, Bucky who had lost the only family he'd had.

_Cry all you want, Stark,_ he'd thought. _Tears don't bring back the dead._

That was before he'd looked into Stark's eyes and realized that, in every way that mattered, Stark was already dead, and that there was no worse punishment Bucky could deliver than to let him live with the constant reminder of his guilt.

So that was what he was doing.

Bucky had inherited more than Cap's hand-me-down clothes. Being Captain America apparently involved being Iron Man's lover as well as the representation of American ideals; the champion of American democracy in bed with the embodiment of the capitalist military/industrial complex, and had he still been the Winter Soldier, Bucky would have found that both amusing and fitting. Part of him still did. Part of him wondered what Steve had seen in the man, if he had really loved him, or if this was some queer (no pun intended) outgrowth of Stark's all-consuming guilt.

When he kisses Stark's bruised eyelids, when he wrappes his good hand around Stark's dick, when he buries himself inside Stark, biting down on his shoulder, real fingers digging into his hips and metal hand curled around the base of his neck, Stark closes his eyes and imagines a dead man's touch.

Bucky can feel nothing with the metal fingers of his left hand, but he can see Stark's pulse beating against his steel palm. All he has to do is close his hand, and the enhanced strength in his cybernetic fingers will crush Stark's life out.

Stark knows this, and it makes his breath catch and his pulse quicken, make him arch his body backwards into Bucky's. And so Bucky relaxes his fingers and lets his hand slide gently, delicately, down Stark's shoulder to his bare, sweat-sheened chest.

He _is_ going to kill Tony Stark. Eventually.

***


End file.
